October 13, 2008

2. Call attention to our Italian-American Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and joke -- in Nancy's presence -- that "Speaker of the House" is English for "prima donna."

3. Have some Four Seasons impersonators sing "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Walk Like a Man," etc.

4. Jump onto the stage, with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in tow, and say "Frankie, come on up," have Frankie Valli, who's been in the audience enjoying his own tunes, come on up and give the Prez a big hug.

"The winds, sometimes called "devil's breath," are mentioned often in the popular culture of Southern California, most memorably in Raymond Chandler's 1938 short story "Red Wind," which describes "hot dry [winds] that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. ... Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen."

Albert, first, it's not possible to predict exactly how much money will come in via taxes in the future.

For example, unexpected prosperity will result in surpluses, which the politicians will then immediately find ways to spend.

Going into debt is not good. We need to cut back on spending, hold the line on taxes, get some surpluses, and use them to pay down our debt. That's the main reason we need McCain and Palin in the WH. There will, unfortunately, probably be a Dem majority in the house/senate. Only McCain can keep them in check. Obama won't even try to stop them. He's one of them.

The Obama '08 team is just not being very reliable about getting the daily talking points and article outlines out far enough ahead of deadline so the writer can prepare an article.

In stead, the writer has to fall back on the tested and true standby of whipping out a snarky piece about what a boob GWB is when entertaining some worthy European dignitary.

And even then it wasn't very good work because it failed to include the phrase 'Mario Batali', a requirement in all articles written about Italian dignitaries visiting the U.S.

In other news - have you noticed that the New York Giants lose football games whenever Barack Obama leads in the polls? If I owned a dress shop in Brooklyn, I'd be very concerned about the upcoming election.

Whatever it was under that Democrat President, it wasn't a real and actual surplus. It was a theoretical on-paper-only surplus, with a couple of humongous things factored out that should've been factored in. And "balancing the budget" it was unforseen and unplanned for anyway.

They should have sung "Abraham, Martin, and John," but maybe that would have been kind of downbeat....

I found this video of the song. Whoever put it together actually embedded subliminal text messages that flash on the screen for about a second. It's unclear whether the the messages are supposed to subvert the song, but it's creepy.

FWIW, both Divine and Waters grew up in the WASPyist areas of Baltimore County. Doubtful Divine was Italian, but more than most, he reinvented himself to be whatever he wanted to be.

The local PBS this past year did a series about British Royalty focusing on life at the various castles and official entertaining. Foreign dignitaries always get a heaping helping of food and music from their homeland. Looks like that is just standard diplomatic practice. Dumb I think, but there you go.

Haven't we heard elsewhere that Pelosi and Bush are quite friendly? That is exactly the sort of jibe a good buddy might make.